Many years ago, in a country far away, a propagandist mastered the concept of the "Big Lie". That is, if you tell the same lie often enough, and loudly enough, people will begin to accept it as fact. That same concept is being practiced today by those who attack passenger rail.

Like many Iowans, I question whether the state's budget crisis is as bad as it seems, considering that we had a surplus before Chet Culver left office. However, saving money with as little pain as possible is always a good thing for government, so here's an idea for Culver's successor, Terry Branstad:

Once again, we see Fox News, in its never-ending campaign to destroy journalism and a Democratic President, distort and mislead viewers on an issue. This time, it's high-speed rail. They've posted an online "calculator" which purports to compare the cost of the President's HSR proposal against an individual's income.

We're delighted to see that our comments seem to have attracted some attention at FEMA. Looking through our server logs, I noticed quite a few hits yesterday from a user accessing our site from "mwpoker-1.fema.gov". Strangely enough, they looked at the home page and spent about 5 minutes looking over the pictures of our cats, but didn't go to the Hancher Auditorium comments. Hmm. This wasn't a random hit--the referrer was a Google search for us by name and city. The visitor came back about three hours later for a quick look.

Aren't you glad our Federal taxes are being used in such an effective way? You don't suppose that maybe they should actually be helping people? Naahhh... that would require some actual work.

...although I don't think it was meant to be that way. The Detroit Free Press published an article over the weekend detailing what could be pretty serious charges being made against Michigan's football program. A number of current and former players claim that UM and its coach, Rich Rodriguez, are violating NCAA rules regarding the time spent by student-athletes in team activities.

The hilarity isn't the article itself--like I said, these are pretty serious charges, if substantiated. The hilarity is in the reader comments that follow. Michigan is infallible! Shoot the messenger! Those players are just wimps--get them out of here! Besides, everybody does it!

No, not everybody does it. There are plenty of respectable programs that follow the rules and still win. Oh, and it sure did Michigan a lot of good--what were they, 3-9 last season? Cheat and lose--serves 'em right.